ROUGH OUTLINES

The funny thing about stories, about big, culminating moments, is that it’s hard to pinpoint their actual beginnings—the pivot in a chain of events that led to one particular outcome occurring over an infinite number of others. Years ago, I was snuggled up in a cabin surrounded by snow in Yosemite National Park, reading Gregory David Roberts’s Shantaram next to a man I’d eventually buy a house with outside Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The novel’s words gave me goosebumps, made me feel something deeply, a thing I didn’t have the words for yet, “Sometimes you break your heart in the right way, if you know what I mean.”

This story I’m trying to tell now might’ve started there. Though, it’s possible it began a year prior when the rudder fell off my kayak in Everglades National Park. Or, it might’ve been earlier still, at a bar on Capitol Hill during a Hannukah Happy Hour. Or, perhaps back in Oregon when I chose to study public policy and bought myself that silver ring after studying abroad in Greece.

I imagine parsing out one’s origin story is similarly webbed for any of the 800 or so people who have found themselves, at some point in their lives, laser-focused on the simple, yet—pardon the pun—mountainous goal of hiking every trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. During the challenge’s 900 or so miles, as you put one foot in front of the other, again and again, it’s hard not to reflect on how you got there, which tiny breeze changed the course of your life toward that particular chapter—moments where you could have gone right but went left, could have turned back but moved forward.

For simplicity’s sake, my story started in earnest on Chimney Tops Trail a handful of months after moving to East Tennessee, and about 48 hours after the man who I thought would be there to help pluck my chin hairs in old age decided our story was over. Heartbreaks like that are so very personal and yet so wildly universal, their pain exquisite in its invitation to grow deeper empathy and compassion for the big and little heartbreaks we each carry every day.

That morning, I drove up the mountain to the trailhead as Dolly Parton sang “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” on repeat through my car’s speakers. Looking back, I wasn’t at all prepared for what was ahead. I wore low-traction gym shoes up an icy December trail without trekking poles. I didn’t have a way to contact someone if something happened. I’m not even sure I brought water or snacks. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to properly prepare for a trip into the wilderness—it’s that I was so disconnected from myself that I was operating on some sort of autopilot set toward the mountains.

As I stepped gingerly around sheets of black ice, I remember hearing frozen vegetation crunch beneath my feet. I remember the sting of the cold on my nose and ears, and how it frosted the depths of my lungs with each breath. I remember the friendly faces that took time to say hello and the man who smelled like French fries as he somehow ran down the slope without slipping. I remember the subtle ways I caught a glimpse of myself again.

Still operating in a grief-fueled daze, I drove to Sugarlands Visitor Center after making it back down the mountain. I placed a stack of maps and guidebooks on the counter for the woman at the register to ring up.

“It looks like you’re trying to hike every trail in the park!” she exclaimed. I nodded.

She asked if I was a local, how long I had lived in the area, what had brought me there. I fumbled through my story of moving for a partner’s job but that not working out. I tried to make words make sense while also not breaking down in the middle of the bookstore.

She kindly looked in my eyes and concluded, “And you’ve decided to stay!”

I hadn’t yet decided to stay. But something in me just said to buy the maps.

Weeks later, I taped a paper trail map of the Smokies to the wooden door of a 1930s art deco apartment in Asheville, North Carolina. Lead-based paint peeled from the ceiling and the windows were so thin the spring pollen could blow right through. I put on Jason Isbell’s “Alabama Pines,” and far too knowingly sang along to the line, “The AC hasn’t worked in 20 years, probably never made a single person cold,” when the afternoon sun turned my space into a sauna.

I’d learned about the 900-Miler Challenge when I first moved to Tennessee, and figured I’d check some trails off here and there. But in this new liminal space of my life, I craved something to hang my hat on, some structured, tangible goal. I was freshly heartbroken in a new town at the start of a global pandemic. I needed a purpose to keep going.

As soon as the park re-opened in May 2020, I began driving there every chance I got. I started my hikes in the Cataloochee and Deep Creek areas of the Smokies since they were closest to where I now lived. A friend from Tennessee met me on my side of the mountain to hike a few times, agreeing to be each other’s covid bubble, and I’ll always be grateful for how she showed up for me then.

But beyond our occasional meetings, the bulk of those early hikes I walked alone—and they were a salve. On Mingus Creek Trail, I stopped mid-climb to sob and let the forest soak up my tears. On Thomas Divide Trail, I took a photo of tiny green sprouts growing from a pile of horse shit and contemplated its metaphor. I went on a solo backpacking trip—the first time I’d done so in far too many years—and camped on Caldwell Fork Trail, where fireflies danced outside my tent walls. On Road Prong Trail, after a week of my emotions killing my appetite, the physicality of the day finally encouraged me to eat and nourish myself again. On Deeplow Gap Trail, a waterfall’s beauty made me gasp before a boom of thunder sounded overhead.

Each time I planned a new hike, I looked at my trail map, an area I hadn’t been to yet, and I felt nervous. Each area I hadn’t explored seemed like a dark scary place where I didn’t know what to expect. Yet each time I pushed myself out to hike the new trail, it met me with peace and light. When I’d get home and mark the completed trail on my map with a magenta Sharpie, one more section of the mountains felt like an old friend, like a place I didn’t need to fear, a spot where I could belong.

As I explored each hill and holler, I dove into my internal landscape too. I mined for lost treasures, watered neglected plants, and removed invasive species. I got to feel what I was capable of, name what I needed, and practice being a little kinder to myself.

I was spending so much time in the park, and growing an increasingly fraught relationship with Asheville, that I inquired with my landlord about potentially ending my lease early to explore housing options back in Tennessee. When I returned a week later after a grueling birthday backpacking trip on the Appalachian Trail with two long-cherished pals, my landlord told me he’d rented my place out. While it wasn’t what I’d planned for, I was getting better at the unexpected. I took it as a sign to make the leap. Within weeks, I settled into a little one-bedroom apartment equidistant from the urban amenities of Knoxville and the Great Smoky Mountains. Life gets you to where you need to be, it seems, so long as you can trust the free fall.

From this new launching point, I kept working toward my goal of hiking every trail in the park, but something else started too. Life grew in all around the days between my hikes. The table I’d bought—and wondered whether I’d have anyone to sit around it with me again—welcomed new conversations and laughter on the patio where I planted a boisterous flower garden. I signed up to volunteer with Big Brothers Big Sisters and smiled along Hughes Ridge Trail thinking about the day I’d meet my 7-year-old match. I solo kayaked the Everglades Wilderness Waterway, camping in South Florida’s exquisite backcountry for the 10-day journey. I returned the next year for a multi-day paddle with my dad, and the year after that with two dear friends. I grew a full-time freelance writing and editing business that became stable enough to pay my bills every month. A friend from Wisconsin drove down so many times to see me and hike with me that she became an honorary local and a bona fide bestie. Another friend reached out every morning to make sure I got out of bed and got moving when I felt like a bag of bricks.

I’d imagined knocking out the 900-Miler Challenge in a year. I’d do it all alone. No one would be there when I finished. And then I would flee the Smoky Mountain region and never look back. But as life ebbed and flowed, as my community grew and my heart healed, I kept pushing the finish line out more and more. And each time I did, the stories that filled in that extra time and space were worth the pivot, the change in thinking, the release of believing I was in control.

I started realizing how much easier and more enjoyable the 900-Miler adventure could be if I accepted a little help. And so, I started hiking with others more. I met a stranger in the Gatlinburg Food City parking lot and exchanged car keys with her so we could each hike Old Settlers Trail in opposite directions, swapping keys back when we met in the middle. I joined two women on their backpacking trip, adding on extra solo miles to finish the remote Hazel Creek region of the park—and gaining the trail name “Robo Hiker” in the process for completing three back-to-back days of 20+ miles each. I started in the dark and ended in the dark on a 30-mile day to get Gunter Fork Trail and Balsam Mountain Trail with a donut-loving woman who became a treasured friend. I hiked Alum Cave Trail and Boulevard Trail with a couple I met at a Sevierville coffeeshop who reminded me of what it looks like to be in love. I completed Ace Gap Trail with a mother and her 7-year-old and 9-year-old who warmed my soul and showed me what it feels like to be at home in the mountains—and with each other.

As I hiked, I listened to many stories. We were all carrying something out there. I met people who had survived cancer, lost a parent, gone through a divorce, suffered a miscarriage, been diagnosed with a chronic illness. I was surrounded by individuals hiking feats they never thought they could—and I was one of them. I often thought of just how many footsteps had traveled the same trails I was—ancestral mountain paths that had been healing weary souls for centuries.

Along the way, I let so much love in that as I neared the end of my map, I realized it had been a while since I’d hiked alone. I thought of a line from a Hafiz poem that I’d repeated to myself many times over the past three years: “Don’t surrender your loneliness so quickly. Let it cut more deep. Let it ferment and season you as few human or even divine ingredients can.”

I planned two final solo jaunts before my last hurrah. As I trudged up Dry Sluice Gap Trail on one of them, I relished the creative energy that time alone in the woods brought me. I paused every 20 feet or so, jotting thoughts down in my notepad. At one point, I stopped and looked at the silver ring on my right hand. As an angsty 20-year-old trying to recalibrate after living abroad for six months, I’d bought myself the ring—etched with the word “love” in seven languages around the band—as a promise that I’d never leave myself. However, I suppose no marriage is perfect, and I know I broke that vow a few times along the way. And to be honest, I can’t say it will never happen again. But, as I stood there in the woods, my heart pounding with life as I climbed to the mountaintop, I began to sketch some new vows.

“I solemnly swear that I’ll always do my best,” I said aloud before scribbling the promise into my notepad. I thought about the upcoming day when I’d walk through an aisle of hiking poles, and I kept writing my vows: I solemnly swear that I’ll listen to myself, that I’ll be generous with myself and others, that I’ll give myself the solo time I need so I can be myself with others. I solemnly swear to love me and to always return to me, even if I get lost sometimes.

And then I got chased off the mountain by a popup summer storm. I prayed and hustled for a solid four miles, shrieking each time I witnessed lightning strike in the trees around me, my vows safely tucked away in my hipbelt.

After a few more trails with some favorite companions, I blinked, and it was time for my final hike—Gabes Mountain Trail. People came into town from California, Wisconsin, Utah, D.C., and all over the Smoky Mountain region to join the celebration. Friends helped me decorate the Cosby Picnic Pavilion with flowers, photos, balloons, and pink and gold embellishments. We put together a delicious post-hike feast, including the world’s most beautiful cake gifted by a special soul I’d met along the way. Friends arrived in the morning before my hike to wish me well and others to join the trek, with more still meeting us halfway at Hen Wallow Falls. It was a hot, humid, perfect Smoky Mountain day.

Around the last 30 yards or so of the hike, my trail crew walked ahead. I stood for a moment alone in the forest, a lush rhododendron bush cradling me before seeing my people again. I thought about turning around and running the other way. What if I wasn’t ready to close this chapter? What if I still had more to learn? What if I wasn’t doing it “right”? What would I do after I finished?

Then, I brought my right-hand ring finger up toward my lips and gave my silver band a kiss. I placed a hand on my heart, closed my eyes, and bowed my head. I opened my mouth to speak the intricate vows I’d rehearsed on trails past, and they came out in one tiny whisper, “Thank you, Korrin.”

I tried my best to wipe away the tears streaming down my face, and then I stepped forward. Sometimes it takes the same courage to name an ending as it does to start an adventure into the unknown. I suppose that’s because they’re always one in the same. The same feet that trudged up Chimney Tops Trail in the winter of 2019 were the ones that found me now—only this time, they weren’t alone.

When I saw dozens of the people who had walked alongside me on this literal and metaphorical journey waiting at the trail’s end, trekking poles lifted high into the classic 900-Miler hiker tunnel, I knew I could do it. I could face another ending. I could renew my vows and walk into the next unknown, with a heart that’s ever bigger for all it has lost and all it has gained in doing so.

I’ll never be able to thank the Smokies enough for letting me be broken for as long as I needed, in just the right way. These mountains encouraged me to let the hurt places stay open a little longer, to air out, to warm in the sun, to bathe in the streams. I’ve covered every inch of trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park now. I look at my map and no place scares me anymore—inside and out. I know that the darker shaded areas of the park’s coves create an environment that some flowers need to flourish. I know that exposed ridgelines offer nourishment for certain grasses and shrubs. I know that we each need to find the right soil that lets us thrive, not just survive.

A week after I finished my 900-Miler map, I climbed Chimney Tops Trail again. It was summer this time and the path was surrounded by lush, green life. At the top, I rested under a towering eastern hemlock. I gossiped for a time with an inquisitive dark-eyed junco. I gazed at the rolling mountain view. I stayed until the Smokies replied, “It’s ok now, darling. Go ahead and turn the page.”

To everyone I met along this journey, to each brilliant wildflower and delicate fern that held me, I’ll say what I said the last time I stood on Gregory Bald conversing with my favorite red oak: I’ll see you again, but there’s always a chance that I won’t, so also, I love you. No matter who or what we get entangled with in the years that follow, I will always love you until the moment I breathe my last breath.

These are the stories that get etched into our souls—the ones that teach us how to write, how to share our songs, how to begin a new one. I have a feeling that my 900-Miler finish was the start of a new story—maybe mine, maybe someone else’s. But we can’t fathom it from here. We won’t know it until we stand one day in all the little bits that this one slice of time set off. So, let’s keep walking, friends. And I promise to be there at the next trail’s end.